Ladder Stabilisers

[sparkythecat]

I've a house to paint and will be doing a fair bit of ladder work in the coming weeks.

There are a variety of ladder stabilising brackets and gizmos on the market and I wondered if anyone here had any experience of using them? Just put 'ladder stabiliser' into a search engine and you'll see what I mean.

I don't have any qualms about working at height, but any extra safety measures are always worth consideration.

[mybrainhurts]

You'll get sick of dragging it around...

[DavidY]

I have a ladder stand-off, affixes near the top and is about 3 times wider than the ladder. Does several things:-

1) Makes it slightly more stable
2) Enables you not to be on top of the house, but spaced back from it by about 18ins-2ft
3) Had a useful hook for hanging a bucket on
4) Makes the ladder top heavy so it a bit of a pain to erect

But for clearing things like gutters it's invaluable. I bought it 20 years ago and probably use it 50% of the time that I use the ladder

davidy

[Wings]

DavidY said:

I have a ladder stand-off, affixes near the top and is about 3 times wider than the ladder

Same here, although only use mine for gutter work on fixing/replacing tiles.

The main thing with ladder work is to place the ladder on sound ground, at an angle of 1 to 4. so bottom of ladder roughly out "1" from the wall, with the top of the ladder resting on the wall at "4" up from the floor. If the ladder needs to be used on grass, then a flat piece of wood goes under the foot of the ladder, and if the ground is slopping, then I have an angle piece of wood to go under one leg of the ladder to make the foot of the ladder horizontal.

[GreenV8S]

Haven't got one but I've seen advertised a stabiliser that has small wheels at the end instead of feet. The idea is that as the ladder flexes while you climb up it, the feet slide around and will shift sideways as well as up and down. The wheels allow the top of the ladder to move slightly without slipping sideways.